The present invention relates generally to the field of telecommunications, and more specifically, to the field of voice activated vehicular telephone systems.
It is well known in the wireless telecommunications industry that voice recognition technologies can be used to interface with vehicular telephone systems, including analog and digital cellular telephones, personal communication system devices, and other types of communication devices. It has long been hoped that the addition of voice recognition capabilities to such systems would make the systems more user friendly, more convenient and efficient to use, easier to learn to use, and more conducive to driver safety. However, the reality is that such systems have not yet been very successful in the market. Past implementations of voice recognition technologies with vehicular telephone systems have often proven to be user unfriendly, difficult to use and learn, and lacking in incentive to overcome the learning curves associated with such systems. First of all, some of the previous systems are capable of providing only a small portion of the important call processing functions which are manually supported by the vehicular telephone system, thus incentive to use is low. Secondly, in order for other systems to provide the user a voice-based method of accomplishing many of the option-laden functions of a vehicular telephone system, such a system would need to support a large and complicated set of multi-layered commands, making it much easier for the user to decide to simply look & reach down to use the vehicular telephone system handset. As a result of not being used, the voice recognition capabilities of such systems have not facilitated greater driver safety.
Another element in many conventional vehicular telephone systems is an external control unit (ECU). Such a device provides an additional user interface which is intended to be more convenient to use than the primary control unit and is often located in the dash of an automobile, or other type of vehicle, but may also be located elsewhere inside the vehicle. A typical ECU includes an output display and most, if not all, of the keys located on the primary control unit, such as a portable telephone resting in a vehicular holder or an installed full-function handset. While ECU's are often more conveniently positioned with respect to the driver, they are typically rather large and present great positioning difficulties to automotive designers. As a result, ECU's are not currently implemented on a very large scale, and, furthermore, after-market attempts to accomplish similar functions frequently appear to consumers to be less impressive or valuable.
There have also been vehicular telephone systems which include both an ECU and a voice recognition component. While both elements have previously been included as options in vehicular telephone systems, each element has previously been designed to address the individual objectives of that element. Consequently, such thrown-together systems also fail to address the problems discussed above. In addition, the very presence of both elements in a vehicular telephone system often exacerbates those problems. For example, a user is much less likely to try to learn how to use a voice recognition system if similar call processing functions may be accessed more quickly through manual operation of a conveniently located, yet non-integrated, ECU.
There is, therefore, a need in the industry for a system for addressing these and other related, and unrelated, problems.